Bad news though, is that I can’t seem to get motivated. It’s hard to exercise when it’s raining EVERY single day. It’s tough to wanna get out and do something when again, it’s raining EVERY single day.

I feel so blah when I don’t eat great or when I’m not active. I feel like a blob. Or a slug. I’m so over this rainy weather and I hope it goes away soon so I can go back to enjoying my turkey mountain hikes and my bike riding along the river.

Some good new for you though is that work is going really great for me. My boss loves me and other people notice it too and have called me “her favorite” which is true. Cause I’m just so awesome at my job. Haha. I mean, it’s true, so I’m gonna own it. I’m getting to try new things such as joining committees we have at work and also doing some new hire training as well as mentoring my fellow coworkers. I think exciting things are coming my way! Stay tuned.

Anyways, back to the healthy eating. As I said last time, I took a quick trip to Dallas to celebrate my nephews 2nd birthday and of course I made a Trader Joes run. I stocked up with some of my favorites like their vegetable fried rice, honey pretzel sticks, chocolate jumbles, pub cheese, and macaroni and cheese. I also got lots of new products to try.

So far, my favorite new product is their frozen meatless sausage patties. They can be heated up in microwave for a super quick breakfast side.

Another great new product is their freeze dried mango. Yum. I truly love mango so much.

Another new product is their peanut butter and jelly Greek yogurt. I loved this. It really did taste just like peanut butter and jelly. Wish I would’ve got more!

A couple other products I bought, tried, and liked were their chicken hotdogs, their frozen chile relleno dinner, and their frozen silver dollar pancakes.

I’ve still got lots more to try, but I haven’t been cooking as much lately. Unfortunately (for my stomach and my wallet) I’ve been eating out more often for dinner. I’m trying really hard to work on that this week though.

I have 2 goals for myself this week. Monday-Friday, I’m trying to not eat out. This really pertains to dinner, just because I NEVER eat out for breakfast, lunch, or snacks. My second goal is to eat vegetarian Monday-Friday for every meal.

I’ll pick 2-3 of the above and mix and match them to give my breakfast variety throughout the week.

Lunch-undecided right now but I’m thinking tomato, basil, and mozzarella sandwiches on ciabatta bread

Dinner-meatless Orange chicken over vegetable fried rice or cheese and veggie quesadillas with guacamole and salsa

Snack-V8, Quest bars, chex mix, pretzels and dip, dried fruit

Speaking of quest bars, I’ve found 2 more flavors I’m obsessed with. I love the banana nut muffin and the chocolate chip cookie dough. Seriously, the 2 best flavors so far!

No picture of the chocolate chip cookie dough. It never stood a chance. I devoured it before a picture ever crossed my mind.

Before I go, I just wanted to talk a bit about how I’ve been feeling since cutting out so much meat from my diet. On days where I truly haven’t been eating any meat, I’ve felt better. I don’t feel heavy or weighed down and my stomach has stopped hurting. The whole reason I started this change was due to the fact that I kept getting upset tummies every day around the same time in the afternoon. Gladly, I can say those have stopped.

Also, I feel like I spend less money on groceries weekly due to not buying meat or deli lunch meat. I used to spend like $9 on a pound of sliced deli meat for sandwiches. Beans and cheese are so much cheaper!

I have to say, I’m happy with the changes I’m making, and I seriously do hope that one day soon, I can call myself a vegetarian.

I’ll leave you with a couple of cuties! First is Ethan at his birthday party. Second is my doggy, Pudgy. They’re both the absolute best!

It seems as though my blogging will be a weekly thing just because I only really have the time and energy to blog on the weekend. That makes for longer posts filled with everything from the week. I like having a theme, but it seems that my theme again this week is “a little bit of everything.” Boo. That’s boring. How about instead this weeks theme is “Selfies” because I have a lot of pictures to share and they’re mostly selfies.

So last week, I left off saying that I was about to go hike on Turkey mountain again with friends, which we did indeed go. We hiked for about 50 minutes and I think we went a couple miles. Of course, we took breaks along the way to drink some water and take pictures.

Again, I had such a great time hiking and even more fun hanging out with friends. After our hike, we went to Freebirds for delicious burritos for lunch.

I didn’t exercise again all week until Friday evening. My friend, Demi, has a gym membership to a gym where she can bring a buddy for free every time. Luckily, I’m her buddy and she takes me for free. This works perfectly for me because I’m cheap AND I need to save money for Mexico.

Demi is a great workout partner because we’re on the exact same level fitness wise. When we workout on the treadmills, we finish our miles at the exact same time. We do this partly because we’re motivating each other. I’ll start to run, and then she’ll run. Then she’ll start running and keep going, and then I’m motivated to run again. We’ve made it into a fun little game/competition and it really helps us go faster, harder, and longer.

Here we are on the treadmills.

After the walking/running on the treadmill, we usually do a lot of stretching. Then, we’ll use the weighted balls to do arm exercises. I really need to get rid of my “wings.” You know, the ones that show up when you lift your arms up and out to the side, yet don’t actually allow you to fly? Those wings.

Sometimes we’ll also ride the stationary bike or the elliptical as well. Most times, we’ve been staying over an hour at the gym. I’m really thankful I’m getting to go for free because when it starts getting really hot outside, I’m not going to want to be outside hiking and biking, so thank God for great friends with gym memberships!

More gym selfies!

That’s all of my exercise this week!

Let’s talk about the good stuff now. Food.

My eating was pretty terrible this week. I ordered pizza. Twice. One day, I even ate the entire pizza in 2 hours. This was me…

Literally.

Only mine was thin crust. That’s better though right? Right? Anyone…?

Eh, obviously not. But I’m glad to say I’m still at the same weight. Hopefully I’m back to being motivated.

I DID make lots of healthy choices this week too.

Breakfast was the same as last week, omelets with toast and milk OR bran cereal with scrambled eggs.

Lunch this week was tuna sandwiches with carrots or fat free refried beans tacos with lettuce, tomato, and cheese with carrots on the side.

I have discovered how easy, fast, and delicious tacos can be. You can put anything into a taco! And they’re literally the quickest vegetarian lunch ever. Throw any canned bean or refried bean in there and add your favorite toppings such as avocado, low fat cheese, tomato, onion, lettuce, salsa, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Oh, I also brought a frozen Trader Joes meal one day for lunch when I was being lazy and didn’t want to cook. And by cook, I mean pack my lunch with things that were already cooked.

Butter chicken with basmati rice. Definitely buying this again! It was spicy and very flavorful and only 385 calories. Yum!

Dinner was pizza (twice), chicken tenders with zucchini fries and carrots, huevos rancheros, or a sandwich bought from Walmart with Pringles. Like I said, my eating wasn’t great this week.

I’m really hoping to get my healthy eating back on track this week. I have my nutritionist appointment in a week and I’d like to be able to show progress since I last saw her, almost 4 weeks ago.

I probably shouldn’t tell my nutritionist about the food truck festival I went to today. I had so much food: jerk chicken tacos with black bean and corn salsa with chipotle mayo, chips and black bean dip, fried mini donuts topped with fruity pebbles, and a hotdog topped with bacon, cheese, cream cheese (because one cheese isn’t enough), and ranch. The festival was so much fun though and worth it, especially since I got to hang out with the bestie.

Here we are right when we got to the festival. We were waiting in a really long line for tacos. I was “sad” because it was hot and I was hungry.

Overall, I’d still say this week was a great week. I remember before when I was at my heaviest, I didn’t enjoy being out or going places. My life was staying in at home almost all the time, in the comfort of my air conditioned home. While I was technically alive, I wasn’t living. Now, even though I’m still extremely overweight, I feel like I’m living my life. I’m getting out, going places, seeing sights, and not living life in front of the tv. It’s refreshing.

Also (a side note) I’m taking pictures again! I NEVER took pictures before because I was fat and felt gross. Now, I’m still fat, but I’m ok with the pictures. I want to be able to look back on my life and have photos of the great memories and events from my life. (Even if the photos are taken at an angle and taken from up high to reduce my double chin and have an added filter….)
This post would not be complete without one more selfie. Or 2 more. 🙂

This last week was a good week for me. Work went well, exercise happened, and my food was on point. Oh, and I finished reading the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy. So, just wanted to tell you about my week!

Food

As I’ve said, I’ve been eating less meat recently and have been enjoying vegetarian lunches for the past month or so, as well as mostly vegetarian breakfasts and snacks. Here’s some of what I ate last week.

Breakfast was either bran flakes cereal with skim milk and egg whites with ketchup OR a frozen Jimmy Dean omelet with 2 slices of whole wheat toast and skim milk.

My vegetarian lunches last week were either tomato, basil, mozzarella salad with roasted garlic focaccia OR my new favorite sandwich, a mashed white bean sandwich with avocado, red onion, and leaf lettuce served with canned carrots or green beans.

This white bean sandwich is so simple. Here’s the recipe!

White Bean Avocado Sandwich

-1can great northern beans, drained, rinsed

-1 tbs olive oil

-1 or 2 tbs fresh lemon juice

-salt and pepper to taste

-1 small avocado, halved

-sliced red onion

-lettuce of choice (I used green leaf)

-sandwich bread (I used sliced focaccia)

Instructions: (Makes 2 Sandwiches)

Put the white beans in a bowl. Mash them so that half are mashed and half are still sorta whole. Add in olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well. Serve on lightly toasted sandwich bread with 1/2 of an avocado scooped out, sliced red onion, and leaf lettuce. Eat and enjoy.

Dinners last week were either a basil, mozzarella naan bread pizza with turkey pepperoni and a side salad OR a frozen Indian dinner from Trader Joes OR mini chicken tacos with a side salad.

I loved the dinners this past week because they were all simple. Assembled and cooked within 10-15 minutes.

For snacks last week, I had my usual V8 with 1/2 of the almond coconut kind bar for my first snack and 2 1/2 tbs of Trader Joes Greek yogurt spinach dip with almond thin crackers for my second snack.

Exercise

This week, I exercised 4 1/2 times from last Sunday to today. Last Sunday, I walked around my moms neighborhood with her for almost 45 minutes. On Tuesday night after work, I walked 2.10 miles and it took about 30 minutes. The half comes from Wednesday, where I walked around my apartment complex for about 10 minutes with my dog. I was pretty tired because I was staying up late every night to read to finish 50 Shades.

I decided to not stay up too late Thursday so that I wouldn’t be too tired to exercise Friday night. Friday, I walked for almost 2 miles for about 30 minutes total. Friday felt like a good workout and I was sweating and exhausted after I was done, but felt great!

For today’s exercise, my best friend had the idea to go hiking. We have an area here called Turkey Mountain, so we decided to go and it was such a blast. We hiked about about 45 minutes, which didn’t even feel like 45 minutes. Halfway through the hike, we came upon a lake and thought it’d be the perfect exercise selfie.

Here are the stats from today’s hike.

The BFF and I are saving money to go to Mexico next year, so we’re trying to eat healthy and get in shape for our trip. We’ve decided that when we hang out, we’re going to do free/cheap things and also try to exercise instead of our usual eating out. Next week we plan to go rent bikes and bike around the city. Can’t wait!

Some of the advice I got from my nutritionist really helped me with my eating this week. I no longer am looking at meals as cheat meals. If I’m going to go out to eat, I’m going to budget it into my calorie goal. I had to do this twice this weekend. Once, I went out to lunch with my mom this weekend, so I cut back calories from breakfast so I could afford the meal calorie wise. And of course we made a healthy decision and went to Zoe’s Kitchen, so that made it easier. I had the grilled chicken pita with feta slaw and no mayo pasta salad.

The second time I ate out, it wasn’t as healthy. I had the chicken and waffles and ate about half of the chicken and half of the waffles. We also had an appetizer of sweet potato fries with spicy caramel and bacon. Super delicious! The restaurant doesn’t have their nutrition information displayed but I used my fitness pal and ended up saying the meal was about 1000 calories, which only put me over my calorie goal by 100 since I budgeted for it that day.

Yes, I felt guilty for the meal, but I also had exercised the night before and was planning to exercise Sunday, which I did, so I feel like I worked some of it off. Either way, I’m not going to let it get me down.

Overall, last week went great! I’m excited for this week also to be filled with healthy foods, fun exercise, and and weight loss! I’ll be weighing this week sometime, so I hope to have a new weight update soon.